


a little bit of sympathy

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 00:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma's been captured by Hydra.





	a little bit of sympathy

The blonde—the one who threatened to shoot Fitz in the head less than an hour ago—gently folds Jemma’s hands around a warm cup of tea and gives her a kind smile. It’s genuine. Which makes it all the more perplexing.

“There. Doesn’t that feel better?” Her fingers drag slowly along the back of Jemma’s hand and the her gaze grows heavier. Warmth, different from that of the tea, follows the touch. “I’m Candice Aldridge.”

That makes more sense now. A little seduction to get the prisoner talking. Which means, despite her earlier threats, Aldridge is not the bad cop. Meaning that whoever is coming through the door behind her…

“Out.” The single syllable has Jemma jumping. Tea sloshes over her fingers, landing in puddles on the metal tabletop. She uses her sleeves to sop it up, mindless of the sting.

“She’s freaked,” Aldridge says, though not disrespectfully.

Ward doesn’t seem to care. “Out,” he says again.

Aldridge rolls her eyes and does as she’s told. Ward spins the seat across from Jemma around so that he can sit in it backwards.

“So,” he says.

She doesn’t much want tea anymore—she didn’t much want it to begin with, though it was a very nice gesture—so she fists her hands around the soggy ends of her sleeves and buries them in her lap.

Ward’s smile hitches up on one side. He’s amused by her awkward discomfort.

“The head of Hydra wants you,” he says.

She shrugs to say _well you have me_.

“Not me,” he says, reading her as well as he ever did on the Bus. “Someone else. Someone who’s been in the game a whole lot longer than me. You got any idea what he might want with you?”

“Yes,” she says, not bothering to hide how miserable that makes her feel. She’s been doing a great deal of that lately, hiding her feelings. For the most part she’s afraid she manages only to appear cold and distant, but it’s better than growing emotional around the others. She’s only made two slips in the months since she’s been back. One, the crying fit in the restaurant, was tame. The other was certainly not and only luck spared her the others seeing.

Ward waits patiently. A year ago she would have sat here, staring him down in silence for hours. But today she finds that it’s difficult, once she’s allowed herself to slip a little, to keep anything back at all.

“I was on another planet,” she says. “A prison. I imagine he wants to know how I returned.”

Ward’s eyebrow arches at the word _prison_ , but he lets it slide for now. “Why would he want to know that?”

She considers him carefully. She hasn’t seen him since the arctic mission and so has no basis for comparison—not that she imagines she could trust her observations of him then anymore than she can trust him now—but she can’t sense any deception from him or any malice. At least not towards her. This other head he’s talking about, him he doesn’t like.

It’s possible—but only barely—that she can trust that Ward doesn’t share this other man’s interest.

Not that it matters. The monolith is destroyed. There’s no going back and no coming home. Nothing matters.

She closes her eyes, shaking off that feeling. It is _not_ true. There’s still hope. Still reasons to keep going on. She has her friends and her work and this whole planet to take joy in. That used to be enough. It will be again. She will _make it_ be.

The sound of something sliding towards her brings her back to the moment. Her cup of tea is gone, replaced by a tablet. The video it displays was obviously taken in secret, likely from a vent near the ceiling based on the angle of the room and the grey lines at the top and bottom of the screen. Beyond that, it takes her a moment to understand what she’s seeing. Something—some _one—_ is moving around the office, tearing up books and throwing files and upending chairs. It isn’t until the figure stops and falls, sobbing, to the floor that Jemma recognizes it to be herself.

“I’m guessing,” Ward says, “that that had something to do with whatever happened on the planet.”

Yes. It did.

She feels hollow. _More_ hollow, she should say. She should also be concerned that Ward was obviously still monitoring the base they raided last week, that Coulson’s fears it was a trap of some sort were warranted. But she’s more horrified that someone—even an enemy—saw her fall apart.

“I’m also gonna go out on a limb here and guess, since you said it was a prison, that there was someone else there. Someone Malick wants to bring back.”

She shakes her head slowly, reaching for that emotionless calm that’s carried her through the last few months. “He can’t. The monolith was destroyed.” She saw its remains dropped into a volcano herself.

“There are more.”

She jumps. This time so violently that one of her knees strikes the underside of the table. “No,” she hears herself say; plead, really.

“There are,” Ward asserts. “I’ve seen them.”

No. Nononono _no_.

She can’t see, can’t hear, can’t _think_ beyond an endless denial because that _cannot happen_. He can’t- he can’t come _back_. If he does, she- she-

There are warm hands on her arms. She can hear Ward, can tell he’s speaking her name—he even calls her _Jemma_ , he must be very worried—but it’s all coming to her from far away. She’s deep underwater, can’t make sense of a thing beyond her own terror.

Then he’s holding her to his chest, his hand cradling the back of her skull while he murmurs reassurances. That’s enough. The contact, not the words she’s too far gone to make sense of. She doesn’t know why clothing is enough of an impediment and hair isn’t but it doesn’t matter because she can feel him and, more importantly, his calm.

It’s a lie. She can sense that, but it’s one Ward wears so completely that it might fool even him. It swallows her up, gives her stability and space to breathe. Space enough to hear him say, “I won’t let him, all right? I’ll stop him.”

Once her heart’s slowed and her breathing’s evened out, he gives her a little physical room as well. He guides her back to her chair and then kneels down in front of her. That might have been his plan all along, but it could just as easily be due to her grip on his hand. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she loses the lie of tranquility he provides her with.

“So I’m guessing this guy Malick’s looking for is bad news?” he asks, twisting his hand in hers so they’re more comfortably intertwined.

She nods once, swallows down her tears. He stretches to grab her tea for her. It’s gone cold but it still soothes the ache in her throat. “He’s an Inhuman.”

“Last I heard SHIELD liked Inhumans.”

“He’s a _monster_.”

Ward’s eyes go a little wide at the vehemence in her tone, but she doesn’t back down from it.

“Is he now?” he asks, taking the cup back to set it aside. Only then does she remember what she said the last time they met.

“Yes,” she says, gripping him tight to keep him from pulling away. “He was one of the first the Kree created.”

Ward stares at her for long seconds, curiosity rolling off him like gentle waves lapping against the shore. And beyond them, wide and deep like the ocean, there’s something … something she can’t … quite …

“Did he hurt you?”

She flinches and it’s his turn to hold tight to her. “He-” She closes her eyes as the memory rises up. He was the first person she’d seen in days but she felt no relief, only fear. He was completely alien to her, old and dark, like a wound left to fester. Even his joy when he said they’d never sent— _sent_ , like she was a gift that had been given to him, not a person stranded by chance—one of his own people to him before left goosebumps on her skin. And then he touched her.

Ward’s fingers are warm against her cheek where Hive’s were cold and brittle.

“He used his powers on me,” she says, her eyes still shut. “He drugged me. He took my pain away, my fear.”

Ward’s thumb slides beside her mouth, where it’s pulled down in a pained frown. “But there were strings.”

She nods into his hand. “I wanted to please him. Because he’d … _freed me_.” Those were his words, a beatific pronouncement. She truly wonders now if he’s been alone so long he doesn’t realize he made her a slave. “So I stopped talking about Fitz and the others. I stopped talking about home. I stopped thinking about it.”

She opens her eyes. She can feel Ward’s emotions better than she could possibly read them in his expression, but old habits are hard to break and she needs to know what he thinks of her. She hasn’t told the others this, not any of it. As far as they know she was alone. They don’t know she spent her days hearing stories of Hydra’s glories—ancient glories, far older than the twentieth century—or that she had, through simple force of will, nearly forgotten their faces. No one’s guessed that the reason it’s so easy for her to adjust to Daisy’s new name is that she had nearly wiped Skye from her own mind. And they certainly don’t know the worst of it.

She tries to smile as new tears run down her face. “And I was _happy_.” It’s a small word compared to what Hive gave her, but she thinks if she tries to explain how he filled her up, made her whole in a way she’d never been before, she’ll break down all over again.

Ward feels so many things while she speaks. She wouldn’t have thought it possible but compassion sits near the top of that list. Then anger, sadness, longing, and a fair bit of triumph she hopes is due to his plans to work against Malick and not because he’s secretly plotting to use Hive for his own ends. She thinks she should tell him about the bodies she found in the valley, just to be on the safe side.

“Happy to comply,” he says gently.

Yes. Yes, that is it exactly.

She’s ashamed, but at the same time she’s also so _so_ relieved that someone finally understands. And of course Ward would. He helped Kara Palamas. He knows better than anyone what brainwashing does to a person.

“But you’re not anymore?” he asks.

“No. Whatever he did ended when I left the planet.” She has some theories about that involving the parasites Bobbi says were flushed out of her system after her return. Bobbi theorized they simply couldn’t survive Earth’s atmosphere but Jemma suspects they were unable to survive so far from Hive.

“Good,” he says so decidedly that she’d believe him even if he weren’t exuding relief. “And Malick’s planning on doing that to the whole world,” he says, mostly to himself.

“Just the Inhumans.” Hive told her about the days before his banishment, the bliss he kept the Inhumans trapped in, and his dreams of extending that hold to the entire human race. But unless his powers have changed in the time he’s been imprisoned, he can still only enslave their people.

Ward barely shows his shock at all, but she can feel how deeply that revelation rattles him. It’s so at odds with his outward demeanor, with the superior Hydra solider he so likes to come off as, that she laughs. It’s the first time she’s done so since returning and, as a result, is short-lived. But it feels good. Very good. She feels a little more like herself, knowing she’s still capable of laughter.

He smiles at her. “So do you plan on setting any of my people on fire?” he asks.

“No. I’m afraid my powers are harmless.” To everyone else at least. She’s still learning to manage them herself.

That cleared up, he rises to his feet and pulls her so smoothly along with him that they’re standing almost chest-to-chest before she realizes what’s happening. He wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Then let’s put a pin in this for now, we can talk about it more when you’re ready. How would you like something to eat? I warn you though, it’ll probably come with a side of more flirting from Aldridge.”

The teasing is most definitely calculated, but she finds she doesn’t care. It’s comforting all the same, like being back on the Bus again in spite of the sharp edge to his words and mannerisms.

Likely she should refuse his offer or at the very least ask whether Fitz is getting similar treatment, but unburdened and with her own laughter still filling up her chest, she finds she doesn’t want to. Ward takes her silence for acquiescence and, when he pulls her into his side, she sinks into both his warmth and the genuine pleasure hiding beneath his manipulative surface. She doesn’t care that it’s likely he thinks he has control of her—or that he very well might if he truly plans on stopping Hive from returning—she only cares that right now, in the heart of Hydra with one of its heads holding her close, is the first time she’s been truly happy since the monolith took her.

 


End file.
